Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807 / Justin Roberts, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roberts, Justin, 1975- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slavery--Colonies--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Slavery.

Slavery--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--18th century.

Enslaved persons--Colonies--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Enslaved persons.

Enlightenment--Colonies--Great Britain.

Enlightenment.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 352 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Slavery & the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book examines the daily details of slave work routines and plantation agriculture in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic, focusing on case studies of large plantations in Barbados, Jamaica and Virginia. Work was the most important factor in the slaves' experience of the institution. Slaves' day-to-day work routines were shaped by plantation management strategies that drew on broader pan-Atlantic intellectual and cultural principles. Although scholars often associate the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment with the rise of notions of liberty and human rights and the dismantling of slavery, this book explores the dark side of the Enlightenment for plantation slaves. Many planters increased their slaves' workloads and employed supervisory technologies to increase labor discipline in ways that were consistent with the process of industrialization in Europe. British planters offered alternative visions of progress by embracing restrictions on freedom and seeing increasing labor discipline as central to the project of moral and economic improvement.

Contents:

Clock work: time, quantification, amelioration and the enlightenment

Sunup to sudown: agricultural diversity and seasonal patterns of work

Lockstep and line: gang work and the division of labor

Negotiating sickness: health, work and seasonality

Labor and industry: skilled and unskilled work

Working lives: occupations and families in the slave community.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-23643-6

1-107-35765-9

1-107-34909-5

1-107-34178-7

1-107-34803-X

1-139-19886-6

1-107-34553-7

OCLC:

857364752